WHEREAS, direct unmediated unfettered access to
information is fundamental and essential to scholarly inquiry,
academic dialog, research, the advancement of research methods,
academic freedom, and freedom of speech; and

WHEREAS, complete control by a computer-user of the
computer's operating system and hardware is essential to the use and
adaptation of computers in research and to the preservation of
privacy; and

WHEREAS, the free flow of information has for many
years been hampered by incompatibilities between Microsoft software
and non-Microsoft systems caused by Microsoft-specific modifications
to open protocols (such as Kerberos[1]), document formats
(such as HTML[2]), and programming languages (such as
Java[3]); and

WHEREAS, there appears to be significant risk that
future Microsoft operating systems will serve to curtail the rights
of scholars and the public to Fair Use of copyrighted material, as
is suggested by Microsoft's patent for a ``Digital Rights Management
Operating System'' (US Patent #6330670, Dec. 2001)[4], and
its development of Palladium[5] and Secure Audio
Path[6], which are technologies that prevent direct access by
computer users to data on their own computers; and

Microsoft-specific Action:

WHEREAS, the restrictions imposed by the license
agreement of the web-page composition tool Microsoft Frontpage
2002, which states ``You may not use the Software in connection
with any site that disparages Microsoft, MSN, MSNBC, Expedia, or
their products or services''[7], are an unacceptable
restriction of freedom of expression; and

WHEREAS, the ``security patch'' Q320920 for Windows
Media Player, which gives to Microsoft remote administration
privileges on the user's computer and the right to ``disable your
ability to copy and/or play Secure Content and use other software
on your computer''[8], involves a substantial surrender
of control and privacy on the part of the computer-user; and

WHEREAS, the fact that Windows Media Player logs and
reports to Microsoft every instance of access to a DVD by the
user[9] is a troubling invasion of privacy; and

WHEREAS, a closed-source proprietary operating system
such as Microsoft Windows cannot be modified by the user to
accommodate specific research or personal needs[10]; and

WHEREAS, excessive dependence of the University of
California at Berkeley (UC Berkeley) on a single supplier of
proprietary operating systems and/or application software renders
the University powerless to resist unreasonable price increases for
software licenses and other unreasonable demands such as license
changes forbidding benchmarking[11] or reverse-engineering
for compatibility; and

WHEREAS, the use of closed proprietary document formats
and information management systems to store the work of faculty,
students, and staff limits the ways these works can be accessed and
archived, and jeopardizes access itself in the long term; and

WHEREAS, open-source, or ``free'' software provides an
alternative to proprietary operating systems and application
software that is robust, reliable and trustworthy, and provides a
means for the University community to retain complete control of its
computer hardware and software, and to retain the rights of Fair Use
of information, and preserve the means to adapt computer systems to
specific research and personal needs; and

WHEREAS, significant savings can be achieved by the use
of open-source software, which has (in almost all cases) zero
licensing costs, and requires no involuntary upgrades such as are an
integral part of current Microsoft Campus Agreements; and

WHEREAS, for the reasons enumerated above, the
exclusive or predominant use of proprietary operating systems and
application software is detrimental to the core missions of the UC
Berkeley; and

WHEREAS, The Educational Technology Committee of the
eBerkeley Initiative here at the UC Berkeley has recently
authored a document that addresses the costs and dangers of using
proprietary file formats in the specific case of email attachments
and concluded that their use should be minimized[12]; and

WHEREAS, open-source software provides an alternative
through whose use the core missions of the UC Berkeley can be
preserved, nurtured, and enhanced; now, therefore, be it

RESOLVED that the Graduate Assembly (GA) of the UC
Berkeley call on the University to provide support for the use by
interested students, faculty, and administrators of the GNU/Linux
operating system; and be it further

RESOLVED that the GA of the UC Berkeley call on the
University to provide support for the use by students, faculty, and
administrators, of OpenOffice.org and/or other open-source
productivity suites; and be it further

RESOLVED that the GA of the UC Berkeley call on the
University to provide support for the use by students, faculty, and
administrators, of open-source alternatives to proprietary
application software wherever possible; and be it further

RESOLVED that the GA Office will henceforth not be
allowed to purchase proprietary software unless specifically
required for a task and after consultation with the GA technical
staff; and be it further

RESOLVED that the GA of the UC Berkeley call on the
University to implement a policy of promoting open document formats
and communication protocols wherever possible and, in the case of
broadcast announcements and other documents intended for a general
audience, discouraging the use of secret and proprietary formats
(such as Microsoft Word format) in favor of open formats (such as
plain text or HTML) that are universally accessible. Finally, be it

RESOLVED that the President of the GA of the UC
Berkeley author a letter to this effect to Chancellor Berdahl,
Executive Vice Chancellor & Provost Paul Gray, Chief Information
Officer & Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology Jack
McCredie as well as the eBerkeley Steering Committee and
Information Technology Architecture Committee.

``It was in this meeting that Microsoft executives said
they intended to `embrace, extend, extinguish' competing
technologies, including Internet standard HTML, McGeady [Intel Vice
President and Government witness] said.'',
ZDNet News, November 8, 1998,
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-512681.html?legacy=zdnn.

See, for example, Java World, December 1998,
http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-1998/jw-12-injunction.html ``... the injunction requires Microsoft to stop shipping
incompatible versions of the virtual machine and to support the
standard native-language interface (JNI) in any versions it does
ship. It requires Microsoft to stop shipping the current version of
its language development environments, to make the standard-Java
mode of its language compiler the default mode, to issue a warning
to developers if they enable the non-standard mode, and to include a
note in that warning that the Microsoft extensions they are enabling
`may be disallowed by court order' in the future.''

News.com, January 22, 1999,
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-220539.html?tag=bplst Specifically, the court required programming tools to be set by
default to disable Microsoft extensions to Java.

``In the Secure Audio Path model, applications cannot be used to
modify packaged music in any way. For example, when an application
is used to intercept a music signal, the signal sounds like random
noise. As a result, applications used to modify signals (such as an
equalizer) cannot change the sound of the music.''

``Each time a new DVD movie is played on a computer, the WMP
software contacts a Microsoft Web server to get title and chapter
information for the DVD. When this contact is made, the Microsoft
Web server is given an electronic fingerprint which identifies the
DVD movie being watched and a cookie which uniquely identifies a
particular WMP player. With this two pieces of information Microsoft
can track what DVD movies are being watched on a particular computer.''

See also ``Microsoft WinXP Update spies on other PC software'', The
Inquirer, 2/25/2003,
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=7980.

Best Practices: Getting Your Message Across by
Email. (University of California at Berkeley, Educational Technology
Committee of the eBerkeley Initiative.)
http://astron.berkeley.edu/~jhall/export/attachments.html.